Contents

Usage
in various languages

Afrikaans

In Afrikaans, the trema (Afrikaans: deelteken) is
mostly used to indicate that the vowel should not be diphthonged, for example
"geër" (giver) is pronounced /xɪəɪr/, whilst "geer" (a wedge-shaped
piece of fabric) is pronounced /xɪər/. There are some cases where
the deelteken does nothing to the pronunciation, like in "reën"
(rain), which is pronounced /rɪən/, but "reen" (no meaning) would
be pronounced the same. The only reason for the deelteken in this
case is for traditional reasons, because the archaic form of "reën"
is "regen" and the deelteken just indicates that the g was removed.
* Some older people do pronounce "reën" in two syllables
/rɪəɪn/.

The deelteken does exactly what it says (Afrikaans:
Deel=Separate). It separates syllables, as it indicates the start
of a new one. An example of this is the word "voël" (English:
Bird). It gets pronounced in two syllables. Without it the word
becomes "voel" (English: Feel), pronounced in one syllable.

Albanian

Ë is the 8th letter of the Albanian alphabet and represents
/ə/. It is the most commonly used letter of the
language comprising 10 percent of all writings.

French and
Dutch

Ë appears in words like French 'Noël' and Dutch 'koloniën'.
This so-called trema is used to
indicate that the vowel should not be diphthonged. For example, "Noël" is
pronounced /noɛl/, whilst "Noel" would be pronounced /nœl/. Likewise, "koloniën" is pronounced /koloniən/, whilst "kolonien" would be
pronounced /kolonin/.

Kashubian

Luxembourgish

In Luxembourgish, <ë> is used
for stressed schwa /ə/ like in
the word <ëmmer> (always). It is also used to indicate a
morphological plural ending after two <ee> such as in
<Eeër> (eggs) or <leeën> (lay).

Mayan
languages

In the modern orthography of Mayan languages, the letter ë
represents /ə/, like in Albanian.

History

E is derived from the Greek letterepsilon which is much the same in appearance (Ε, ε) and function. In etymology, the Semitichê probably first represented a praying or calling human figure (hillul jubilation), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that was pronounced and used quite differently. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words), in Greek hê became Εψιλον (Epsilon) with the value /e/. Etruscans and Romans followed this usage. Arising from the Great Vowel Shift, English usage is rather different, namely /iː/ (derived from /eː/ in "me" or "bee") whereas other words like "bed" are closer to Latin and other languages in usage.

Usage

Like other Latin vowels, E came in a long and a short variety. Originally, the only difference was in length but later on, short e represented /ɛ/. In other languages that use the letter E or e, it represents various other phonetic values, sometimes with accents to indicate contrasts (e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ).

At the end of a word, E is very often silent in English (silent e), where old noun inflections have been dropped, although even when silent at the end of a word, it often causes vowels in the word to be pronounced as diphthongs, conventionally called long vowels (compare as a noun rat and as a verb rate).

References

^ "E" Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993). Ees is the plural of the name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is E's, Es, e's, or es.